My first Publication Arup_BuildingDesign2020_v2 | Page 42

Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest’s
sensor hardware and responsive algorithms
indicates the importance of user-responsive
systems to a truly integrated future.
Behaviour-response technologies have
broad applications to the AEC sector, from
dynamically increasing energy efficiency to
allowing long-term usage pattern observation
and logistics planning.
Case Study: Networked Environmental Sensors
Case Study: User-Controlled and Behavior-Responsive Systems
Location / Business: San Francisco, CA.
Nest / Google for commercial use.
the complex interactions of the built
environment.
Networked environmental sensors of this
sort have immediate value to users, allowing
them a fine-grained understanding of their
personal environment, commute logistics and
health trends. The implications for building
design are enormous; distributed sensing
programmes provide a wealth of data that can
be leveraged across the design, construction
and operations phases to minimise traffic
disruptions, improve energy performance and
modify structures to accommodate usage
patterns.
Nest Labs’ smartphone controllable
thermostats and smoke alarms can track
temperature trends, adjust to occupancy
patterns and modify their own behaviour to
optimise efficiency, eliciting considerable
interest from both the technology and
AEC sectors. The Copenhagen Wheel is a sensor platform
easily mounted to most standard bicycle
frames. The smartphone-controlled unit
records and transmits data about weather,
pollution levels, road conditions and traffic
loads, allowing users to plan healthier bike
routes and city officials to better understand
3.2 Data geometrical forms, future use of such information and
analysis will enable designed forms of all types to be built
with greater efficiency, adaptability, and resilience.
In an urbanizing, warming, and increasingly interconnected
world, a critical element of design will be robust, efficient
tools for analyzing and applying a wealth of progressively
more sophisticated data. The current explosion of sensing
technology at the building performance level, widespread
distributed monitoring systems at larger environmental
scales, and increasingly advanced capacities for data analysis
in the design process will define the practice of building
design in the coming decade and beyond.
Currently, designers are making fast progress in
aggregating and analyzing such data. Tools such as Building
Information Modeling (BIM) and related practices hold
the potential to organise this ever-growing amount of
information across specialised design teams throughout the
building’s construction and operational phases. Whereas past
application of data-gathering and processing advancements
was largely exemplified by the design of highly complex
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Location / Business: Copenhagen, Denmark.
MIT for United Nations Climate Conference.
Sensing and Monitoring
Currently, forward-looking building design projects are laying
the foundation for advancements in sustainable design and
more comprehensive data analysis. In many countries, legal
policy work is being addressed to enable financing for future
retrofit projects that take into account long-term operational
savings in addition to upfront capital expenditure. Performance
monitoring at the building level in current projects can be
expected to allow for increasingly advanced data to be gathered
at the systemic level in the coming decade.
Data collection and analysis will become increasingly
ubiquitous in building design. Collection will occur at a
broader scale throughout cities, enabling efficiencies of design
and operation impossible when data gathering is limited to the
discrete building level. Successful design projects will both
Building Design 2020
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